But Ms. Falk has brought the subjects together with a personal touch, producing an appealing narrative that compares an old debate (the Taung child) with a newer one (hobbits) to gauge how much—or how little—paleoanthropology has changed in the past century.

In the annals of paleoanthropology—the study of ancient humans—two disputes stand out: the discovery of the "Taung child" in 1925 and the revelation in 2004 of fossil "hobbits" on Flores Island in Indonesia.

The compressed history of Ethiopia that made up the first part of the exhibit felt tacked on ( "okay, we'll let you take this unique artifact on the road, but you have to tell something about our country"), the hands-on section in the middle on the practice of paleoanthropology and the structure of